Vladimir Putin isn't just the second most powerful person in the world. As this FP Slide Show makes clear, the Russian leader is also a race-car driver and a blackbelt in judo.

By Ian Bremmer

A few days ago, I took a quick, informal survey around Eurasia Group on power and global politics. The question: Who are the world's most powerful people? We're defining power as "a measure of an individual's ability to (singlehandedly) bring about change that significantly affects the lives and fortunes of large numbers of people."

Here's what we came up with:

1. Nobody -- In a G-Zero world, everyone is waiting for someone else to shoulder responsibility for the world's toughest and most dangerous challenges. The leaders you'll see named further down this list are preoccupied with local and regional problems and don't have the interest and leverage needed to take on a growing list of transnational problems.

2. Vladimir Putin -- In Russia's personalized system, this is still the person who counts. He isn't as popular as he used to be, and his country has no Soviet-scale clout or influence, but no one on the planet has consolidated more domestic and regional power than Putin.

3. Ben Bernanke -- The world's largest economy is still struggling to find its footing. To help, no one has more levers to pull and buttons to push. The world needs the U.S. economy back on its feet, and Bernanke has more direct influence than anyone else on when and how that happens.

4. Angela Merkel -- For the moment, her commitments are the glue that binds Europe. Merkel's ability to bankroll Europe's emergency funds, win concessions from the governments of cash-strapped peripherals, and maintain solid popularity at home continues to be a remarkable political and policy achievement.

5. Barack Obama -- Even at a time when Washington is focused almost entirely on Washington, the elected leader of the world's most powerful and influential country carries a lot of water. The Obama administration will watch the eurozone from the sidelines and keep commitments in the Middle East to a minimum, but America will continue to broaden and deepen security and commercial relationships in East Asia, and Obama's decisions on how far and how fast to move will be crucial.

6. Mario Draghi -- Europe's backstop. Europe's Central Bank has kept the continent's blood flowing at a crucial moment in its history, and his work is far from done.

7. Xi Jinping -- China's forward progress is the world's most important variable, and Xi Jinping is now the man behind the wheel. Over the next decade, economic and political reforms will be needed to keep China on track, and Xi will make some difficult (and profoundly important) decisions.

8 (tie). Ayatollah Khamenei -- The supreme spiritual and political authority in a country at the heart of a volatile region. Halfway through 2013, Ahmadinejad will give way to a new president, but it is still Khamenei who will decide how the international fight over Iran's nuclear program plays out -- and what the future holds for the Islamic Republic.

8 (tie). Christine Lagarde -- The world's fire marshal. Here is that rare leader whose contribution will be crucial in multiple regions at once. But nowhere will the IMF's work be more important than in keeping Europe on track.

10. King Abdullah Bin Abd al-Aziz -- King of a kingdom with a unique power to move markets. The Saudi monarch is not in the best of health, but the choices he makes in determining who lead the world's hydrocarbon powerhouse into the next generation will help shape the entire global economy for many years to come.

What do you think?

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group.

By Carroll Colley

While Russia will enter the WTO in late August, U.S. industry will be left on the sidelines until Congress removes the Cold War-era impediment to greater trade between the former foes. But it's a safe bet that Congress won't graduate Russia from the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which is necessary to grant permanent normal trade relations to Russia and take advantage of its accession to the WTO, before the November election. The reason? Russia is perpetually steeped in controversy, and U.S.-Russia relations have become a campaign issue in the race between Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. U.S. industry likely won't be able to take advantage of greater market access in Russia until the lame-duck session at the end of the year, and possibly later.

The White House is much more focused on November 6 (Election Day) than August 23 (the approximate date of Russia's WTO entry). Only after repeated requests from Republican lawmakers for senior level officials to testify on the Hill -- widely viewed as a Republican maneuver to force the administration to speak on the record about its Russian policy -- did the administration relent by sending the duo of Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. The White House calculates that a "yes" vote on graduating Russia from Jackson-Vanik (a 1974 provision that ties trade relations to freedom of emigration and other human rights considerations) would have little electoral upside, and might even harm Obama before the election.

Obama's meeting on June 18 with President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the G20 in Los Cabos seemingly failed to produce a breakthrough on Syrian policy. Headlines about ongoing arms shipments bound for Syria and the potential for continued Russian intransigence at the U.N. Security Council also represent potential political liabilities during the election home stretch, not to mention a host of domestic political issues. Romney, meanwhile, has called Russia the U.S.'s greatest political "enemy" -- and later changing that description to "foe" -- because he senses a potential weakness in an Obama foreign policy that has otherwise produced several notable successes.

It would be much simpler, politically, if supporters of graduating Russia from Jackson-Vanik could cast it as a vote for American business, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did in a recent opinion piece. But they can't. Passage is complicated by the Magnitsky bill, human rights legislation that targets government officials involved in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in police custody in 2009. Largely viewed as a replacement for Jackson-Vanik, the stated aim of the bill is to deny visas to corrupt officials, freeze any U.S. accounts they have, and publish their names. The reality is that the Obama administration last summer instituted its own visa ban and any potential offenders have long ago transferred any funds from the U.S.. The net effect of the bill, therefore, is the "naming of names," which would represent a significant embarrassment to the Putin regime. The bill enjoys broad bipartisan support, with a number of lawmakers stating publicly that passage of the Magnitsky bill is a prerequisite for their vote on Jackson-Vanik.

The Obama administration has sent contradictory messages about its support for the Magnitsky bill. While originally opposing the bill, the administration seems to have accepted the inevitable and has been working with its primary author, Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. One recent Senate version provides for the public list as well as a confidential annex, which would largely allow the administration to circumvent the thrust of the bill by invoking national security exemptions. This is strongly opposed by a number of senior lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, who was a co-sponsor of the effort to repeal Jackson-Vanik on the caveat of corresponding passage of the Magnitsky bill.

As the August recess rapidly approaches, the window for graduating Russia from Jackson-Vanik prior to its WTO accession closes. Obama appears to have little room to maneuver in expending political capital on the matter without raising the risk of elevating Russia-and its collateral baggage including Syria, Georgia, Iran, and domestic protests-to a legitimate campaign issue. Unless Congress moves forward on its own prerogative-which appears unlikely-the repeal of Jackson-Vanik won't get passed before November, or later, leaving the world's largest economy unable to take advantage of the accession of the WTO's newest member.

Carroll Colley is the director of Eurasia Group’s Eurasia practice.

By Alexander Kliment

Russian President Vladimir Putin's last minute decision to skip a G8 summit with President Barack Obama is a snub to Washington, but the Russian president's no-show may in fact increase the chances for a constructive relationship between the two countries.

Last week, just days after his inauguration, Putin let it be known that he would not attend the upcoming G8 summit at Camp David, where he and Obama were set for a one on one meeting.

The White House, in turn, said Obama wouldn't attend the 2012 Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) summit this fall in Vladivostok, Russia -- though it was always hard to imagine Obama skipping the Democratic National Convention.

According to the Kremlin's official explanation, Putin can't leave Russia right now because approving the cabinet nominations submitted to him by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is too sensitive a task for Putin to oversee by phone from Maryland. So Medvedev will send the list to Putin and head to the summit himself.

Putin's decision is a breach of G8 protocol, which expects that sitting heads of state will attend the group's summits. French President Francois Hollande, for example, will attend, just days after his 15 May inauguration. And by sending his number two to an organization in which Russia is already something of a second fiddle, Putin is raising questions about the wisdom of keeping Russia in the group at all.

Accordingly, many analysts have cast the move as a brazen rebuke to the U.S., which Putin alleges is behind the unprecedented street protests that have become a feature of Moscow life since last December.

It's true that the Kremlin's official explanation isn't wholly credible. Most cabinet decisions have likely been agreed upon already, Putin's re-election was never in doubt, and the G8 summit's date has been known for some time. That said, he reassumes the presidency amid rising popular opposition, which has sowed fresh doubts about his legitimacy. Keen to prevent infighting or, worse, insubordination among Russia's powerful elites, Putin could well be preoccupied with some last minute horse-trading at home.

The timing may, in fact, be no better in Washington than it is in Moscow.

Obama is entering a challenging re-election campaign in which he has already drawn fire from his Republican opponent Mitt Romney about the pursuit of a reset with Russia and his broader foreign policy track record. U.S.-Russia ties have deteriorated recently -- on account of disagreements over Syria, continuing friction over missile defense, and Putin's allegations of U.S. complicity in the protest movement -- meaning the U.S. president would be under pressure to take a hard line with Putin.

But that could risk an unpredictable flare-up with the notoriously sharp-tongued and pugnacious Putin. At the very least, it might complicate White House attempts to secure congressional support for granting Russia normal trade relations status so that U.S. companies can benefit from Russia's WTO accession.

In short, with both men facing heightened domestic concerns and pressures, Obama's meeting with Medvedev, who has warmer relations with Obama and who is seen chiefly as a messenger for Putin, carries much less political significance, but also much lower political risk. The practical result is that it leaves open the chance of greater flexibility between Washington and Moscow that could help maintain a pragmatic relationship in the medium term.

Alexander Kliment is an analyst with Eurasia Group's Eurasia practice.

By Emily Hoch

On Monday, as locals flock to successive showings of Contagion, the United Nations General Assembly will meet in New York for its second ever high-level meeting on health, on the comparably mundane topic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs):  heart and chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, and cancer, among others. With all the high-drama causes out there, it might seem odd that the U.N. is focusing its attention on what are typically considered codas to the lives of the rich and the elderly. But NCDs have become a universal threat. They kill three in five people a year, and 80 percent of the victims in 2011 will live in developing countries. Roughly a third will be younger than 60. Even larger numbers of people are living disabled by these illnesses.

As such, low- and middle-income countries are facing what demographers call a double burden: Policymakers must balance prevention and treatment of diseases typical of the young and impoverished, such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria, with stemming an NCD pandemic that the World Health Organization predicts will increase deaths by 15 percent by 2020. And despite the announcement today that Ely Lilly will donate $30 million to developing-country diabetes research, only 3 percent of all development assistance for health (worth a total of $22 billion) is dedicated to NCDs.

The only other U.N. General Assembly meeting on health was the 2001 session on HIV/AIDS, a turning point in the struggle to curtail that pandemic. Since 2001, billions of dollars have been spent on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and almost every country includes an action plan for HIV/AIDS in their policy framework. The biggest achievement of the HIV meeting was the establishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has been lauded for reducing the human burden of these maladies while improving efficiency and country-level leadership.

A Declaration of Commitment on NCDs is likely this time around, too, and countries, activists, and corporations have found common ground on low-cost interventions. But real action is likely years away. While many in the global health community want to expand the Global Fund's mandate or to establish funds for other causes, neither of these options is likely. Experts have concurred that a new institution or funding pledge might distract cash-strapped governments from key tasks, such as strengthening overall health systems and regulating risk factors, including changes in the food and beverage industry. Instead, the United Nations will probably encourage member states to insert line-items for NCDs in their health budgets, develop national NCD plans, and take a strong stand on prevention.

Even there, the challenges will be considerable. In nearly every country, the sale and distribution of tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods -- key risk factors for NCDs -- is big business. Governments dependent on tax revenue from the sale of these products may be hesitant to compel their citizens to change their lifestyles. China recently passed its first smoking ban, for example, but the state-owned China National Tobacco company generated $76 billion in taxes and profit for the country in 2010. Russia, the number three beer-consuming nation (after China and the United States), delayed any attempts at improving behavior by only recently classifying beer as alcoholic. And in Brazil, where 40 percent of the population is overweight and 10 percent is obese, the government has been accused of welcoming Nestle plants and micro-distribution networks that specialize in fatty and salty foods. So while the U.N. meeting next week is a significant step forward, as with losing weight, these changes will take years (if not decades) to implement.

 Emily Hoch is an associate in Eurasia Group's global health practice.

By Ian Bremmer and David Gordon

We've now released our annual report on the ten most important political risks for 2011. Over the next two weeks, we'll be discussing each risk in more depth in this space. We begin with a brief overview.

In the past, our coverage of political risk has centered on particular countries, regions, issues, or events. We worry about elections in brittle countries and their ability to generate unrest, military confrontations involving unpredictable governments, or a policy shift with serious implications for a country's business climate and growth trajectory. For 2011, we're focused on a fundamental ongoing change in the global order.

As we step into 2011, headlines in the United States suggest a little more optimism about recovery, but market players and business decision-makers aren't convinced. Gold prices remain relatively high, and trillions of dollars that could be invested remains on the sidelines. Why the caution?

We're entering an entirely new world order with new ways for states to relate to one another, both politically and economically. That problem could provoke new areas of conflict, and it will highlight an emerging vacuum of power in international leadership -- and the uncertainty that comes with it.

We're calling this new order the G-Zero, because no country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage today to drive an international agenda. The G-20 helped build a useful crisis response when the financial crisis hit, but as the sense of urgency evaporated, so did the unity. The G7 is an anachronism. The G2 (the United States plus China) won't work, because the United States can't afford to keep up its role as primary provider of public goods, and China (like other emerging states) is much more interested in protecting domestic growth and stability than in accepting new burdens abroad. The G3 (the United States, Europe, and Japan) isn't viable, because Europe is shoulder deep in a bid to save the eurozone, and Japan's government is dysfunctional.

There's no international leadership, and each government will increasingly protect its gains at the expense of others. That's why the dominant economic trend of the last 50 years, globalization, now faces a direct challenge from geopolitics. Governments in both the developed and the developing world have every incentive to throw up barriers to commerce and investment that are designed to protect their own workers and companies -- and no country or bloc of countries has the will or the muscle to reverse this trend.

Our list of risks for 2011 includes the potential for crisis in Europe, tensions at the intersection of cybersecurity and geopolitics, China's unwillingness to bow to a growing surge of international pressure for economic policy changes, provocations from North Korea, and the risk of a spike in currency controls. All these risks are intensified by this transition to a G-Zero order.

Next up, we'll look at the G-Zero in greater depth, because it's our top risk for 2011.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group. David Gordon is the firm's head of research.

By Wolfango Piccoli

Later this week, the European Council will press Turkey's government to reconsider its refusal to give Greek Cypriot vessels access to its air and sea ports under a customs union pact with the bloc. While this may cause some tension, Turkey's EU membership talks won't be formally suspended or further complicated by tougher measures. EU leaders are wary about aggravating tension and undermining U.N.-sponsored peace talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities aimed at ending the island's 35-year partition. Plus, there's no need for the EU to take more action against Ankara. The process of accession negotiations has almost completely lost its momentum, and it certainly won't get a jumpstart in 2010, given the adverse political circumstances prevailing in both Turkey and the EU. If the prevailing mutual disinterest between Turkey and the EU persists, Ankara's accession talks will inevitably run to a halt, raising the risk of a more definite split between Turkey and the EU next year.

The key issue for Turkey's EU bid is Cyprus, on which negotiations began in September 2008, but little progress has been made. If a settlement isn't reached by spring 2010, it could bring a total breakdown in Turkey-EU talks. While it's hard to trace a sense of urgency on the Greek Cypriot side, the April 2010 presidential elections in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are generally regarded as an informal deadline for the reunification talks. Without a settlement, the present incumbent, Mehmet Ali Talat, may lose his seat in April and be replaced by a president who is less supportive of a settlement, which would further complicate the already thorny negotiations. Meanwhile, as long as the EU's commitment to accept Turkey remains ambiguous, it is difficult to see how Ankara could accept a settlement concerning the divided island.

Within Turkey, accession to the EU is not a priority for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders, who are far more focused on their policy of expanding Turkey's foreign policy drive beyond Europe and its traditional western allies to the Middle East, Russia, and the Caucasus. This pursuit is aimed at establishing Turkey as a regional player, building on the country's location, Ottoman past, and greater economic power. But this foreign policy course has minimal implications for Turkey's EU aspirations.

Turkish government and AKP officials seem to share the belief that by casting Turkey as an aspiring powerbroker in its neighborhood, the country will obtain stronger leverage in its membership negotiations with the EU. Such a belief is deeply flawed as the EU will not cut Turkey any slack on reforms because of its strategic importance as a potential energy transit route and its growing diplomatic clout in its neighborhood. To make things worse, the EU is not seen any longer by the AKP leadership as a vote-winning card because the Turkish public has lost faith in the positive outcome of the accession talks.

Certain EU member states (notably France and Austria) can be equally blamed as they have undermined the EU's credibility by sending negative messages concerning the final outcome of the accession talks and by creating new obstacles that do not allow for the opening of various policy chapters. The acceptance by the other EU member states of these impositions (which are in violation of the EU's framework for negotiations with Turkey of October 2005) has exacerbated the damage. As a result, the EU has lost much of its leverage vis-à-vis Turkey, harming the functioning of the interplay of EU conditionality-Turkey compliance. Given the inability of the EU's 27 governments to reach a common position on Turkey, it is difficult to foresee how the EU could bring greater credibility to its formally existing commitment for Turkey's accession in case of successful completion of negotiations.

Unless Turkey's accession process receives an unexpected boost from the ongoing Cyprus negotiations, the AKP or the EU probably won't take any major step to re-galvanize Ankara's bid for membership. At the moment, both sides appear more concerned with keeping the process alive than moving it forward. In the longer run, the mutual estrangement between Turkey and the EU is set to send Turkey's EU bid into a slow death spiral, raising the risk of a more definitive split between the two sides.

Wolfango Piccoli is an analyst at Eurasia Group.

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images